Opening soon on Broadway are “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “The Lyons,” starring Linda Lavin (about), two shows that flourished on smaller stages.

Opening soon on Broadway are “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “The Lyons,” starring Linda Lavin (far right), two shows that flourished on smaller stages. (
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You need a lot of bells and whistles to get noticed these days, let alone land a hit. Some shows bank on stars, usually brought in from the screen. Some rely on songs so popular, the audience is whistling them before entering the theater. Others spend a gazillion dollars covering buses in flashy ads.

And then there are the quiet productions, the ones that capture local audiences with old-school assets: compelling actors and creative stagecraft, small budgets and big hearts. Crazy, right? But sometimes it works!

The most recent example is “Once,” the musical based on the Irish movie of the same name. After a sold-out run in the East Village, it reopened on Broadway this month to excellent reviews, thanks to a charismatic cast and a catchy pop-folk score rather than marquee names and over-roasted jukebox chestnuts.

Granted, not every transfer works. For every “Brief Encounter” and “Venus in Fur,” there’s a “Scottsboro Boys” and “Lysistrata Jones,” which soared downtown but belly-flopped on Broadway.

Undeterred, a handful of small shows are stepping onto bigger stages this spring.

“Peter and the Starcatcher” shares with “Once” a birthplace — New York Theatre Workshop, the original home of “Rent.” And like “Once,” this show, opening at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on April 15, favors imagination over whiz-bang gimmickry.

The similarities end there: “Peter and the Starcatcher” is an irony-laden but family-friendly fantasy that tells how Peter Pan became the boy who wouldn’t grow up, and how a certain villainous captain — played by Christian Borle, from TV’s “Smash” — got his hook.

Union Square’s Vineyard Theatre is another downtown institution with a history of transfers: “Avenue Q,” “[title of show]” and “The Scottsboro Boys” started there before going to Broadway. Its latest export is Nicky Silver’s darkly funny “The Lyons,” in which the death of a patriarch wreaks further havoc in an already dysfunctional family. Spearheaded by Linda Lavin at the top of her comic game, the original cast is moving to the Cort, where previews start April 5 for an April 23 opening.

The only spring offering that comes close to “The Lyons” for biting humor is Bruce Norris’ “Clybourne Park.” (Previews start tonight at the Walter Kerr, for an April 19 opening.)

It took a while — the show was at Playwrights Horizons in 2010, and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year — but this clever variation on “A Raisin in the Sun” is finally getting a chance to reach a bigger audience. Again, there’s no flash here: just a great script served on a silver platter by an ensemble of homegrown favorites like Jeremy Shamos, Annie Parisse and Christina Kirk.

The last transfer is the most modest of the bunch, but don’t let it fly under your radar: Produced by LCT3 — the arm of Lincoln Center Theater dedicated to emerging playwrights — Amy Herzog’s “4000 Miles” is jumping from 199 seats at the Duke on 42nd Street to 309 at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theatre, where it opens April 2.

The change isn’t that big, but then, nothing about the unassuming “4000 Miles” is.

In it, Herzog tenderly describes how an elderly woman and her grandson bridge the decades to forge a bond. That the grandma is played by the incomparable Mary Louise Wilson (“Grey Gardens”) is just one more reason to rejoice that this lovely show is getting a second chance.